Internet protocol television (IPTV) is a manageable multimedia service that transmits television, video, texts, images, and data over an IP network and provides QoS (quality of service)/QoE (quality of experience), security, interactivity and reliability. An IPTV technology integrates multiple technologies such as an Internet technology, a multimedia technology, and a communication technology, uses a broadband network as infrastructure, uses a household television, a personal computer, or a mobile phone as a major display terminal, and provides, through the IP protocol, a user with various interactive multimedia services including a digital television program.
A video sharing (Video Share) service refers to a service in which a user initiates video sharing to a peer end of a call in a call process. A shared object may be video that is captured by a mobile terminal through a camera in real time, or a video clip file stored in the mobile terminal. In a call process, a user may randomly initiate or terminate the service. Later, a sharing technology is extended. Sharing content is not limited to video, but may also be discrete media, and such sharing is collectively referred to as content share.
A current video sharing solution is provided as follows. A share initiator terminal sends a request message (for example, SIP Invite), where the request message is forwarded by an application server to a share receiver terminal, and an Accept-Contact header field of the request message carries a characteristic identifier (for example, “+g.3gpp.cs-voice”), which indicates what is initiated is a video sharing service. The share receiver terminal returns a reply message (for example, SIP 183), where SDP information of the reply message carries a media type and an encoding type that are received by the share receiver terminal, and the reply message is also forwarded by an AS to the share initiator terminal. Subsequently, resources are reserved at the share initiator terminal and the share receiver terminal separately, and after the resources are successively reserved, the share initiator terminal performs real-time video sharing with the share receiver terminal through an RTP packet.
In the foregoing content sharing solution provided in the prior art, a share initiator terminal initiates a share request message to perform content sharing. However, most existing set-top box IPTV terminal function (ITF) do not support a content sharing feature, and a user cannot use these current terminals to initiate a content sharing service. If such current terminals are improved, a cost is relatively high. Therefore, an existing IPTV system cannot support a content sharing service effectively.